Imagery In Joyce Carol Oates The Temple

Throughout “The Temple” by Joyce Carol Oates, she uses a lot of literary terms to influence her way of writing. Oates displays a pretty smooth and flowing plot line from the beginning to the end of the short story. Along with the plot, she also displays an inner conflict with the character of the story, uses imagery in describing the environment and how the character is feeling, uses symbolism, and also seems to show an antagonist. Although starting slow, she soon begins the direct the story to what seems to be a comparison to a child birth with the character finding the mysterious bones.
In the beginning of the story, Oates opens up “The Temple” in describing how the character hears the sound of something mysteriously, describing it in saying how it is a “vexing, mysterious sound!- a faint mewing cry followed by a muffled scratching, as of something being raked by nails, or claws” (1). This gives rise to question about what this mysterious sound

is and where is it coming from and why? The main character of the story is named “she” from the start of the story and all the way to the end, never giving a name to the character.
Oates describes the sound that the character is hearing as if it is like “a baby’s cry, terribly distressing to hear! And the scratching, which came in spasmodic, desperate flurries, was yet more distressing, evoking an obscure horror” (1). This now gives rise to the beginning exposition of the story and the introduction to baby comparisons. Using the imagery that Oates expresses, it shows that the setting is taking place around the summer time due the fact that the character stepped out into the warm sunshine and describes that the sound was heard around March, placing the current time near the summer. Being a pretty slow but using an extensive amount of imagery to describe what the character is feeling and seeing around her. The rising action picks up shortly after the character decides to go out on an expedition to locate the location of the mysterious sound as described in the beginning of the exposition.
Around the beginning of the rising action, Oates begins to use more imagery to describe an old garage that use to be a stable of some sort.

The readers can infer that the house is old due to Oates describing the shovel, rake, and gloves used to help dig up the object that is found by saying how they are “festooned in cobwebs and dust, and stiffened with dirt’ (2). As the character begins to dig up the area around where the mysterious sound is coming from, the rising action really seems to pick up and a sense of the introduction to an antagonist is shown. The main character begins the be seen as an antagonist showing how throughout the rest of the story, she begins to go a little bat-shit crazy over the sound of the mysterious object and making herself believe that it is a baby. She begins to talk to herself in attempt to communicate with the source of the sound saying, “Yes, Yes. I’m here” and “I’m here now” (2). This begins to show that the character may have some sort of a connection with whatever she is searching

for.
Oates never mentions whether or not the character had any kids or lost any kids in the past due to a still birth. The character is said to be fifty though, so something could have happened in the past to her. Oates next begins to use symbolism in a way to describe what is seems to be as if a child birth is taking place. This can be inferred from her saying that the character “dug again, deepening and broadening the hole which was like a wound in the jungle- like vegetation” (2). This could be broken down in describing how the uterus of a woman, or the wound, is stretched out during child birth to make way to baby coming out. Saying how there is jungle- like vegetation is like describing how a woman has hair surrounding the wound. After this could already be enough to convince the mind of child-birth, Oates also describes how the character cut a worm in two while digging which could be the umbilical cord being cut after delivery of the baby.
Once, the delivery or discovery of the object is seen, the character is astonished in her findings. She discovers how it is a human skull, which is soon found out to be a child skull due to the dimensions. This is the transition from the rising action into the climax at the point in the discovery of the skull. Oates begins to again, use more descriptive language describing the look of the so called skull that the character has now discovered. It is said how the skull has a “ceramic glaze”, “color or parchment, badly stained from the soil”, “perfect formed jaws”, “mirror eyes” (3). When the character says mirror eyes, this is what caught attention in giving an example in how child- birth is being described too. When a child is born, generally there is a resemblance between the mother and the baby. The character of the story sees this resemblance. Could the character have had a still- birth and is treating the discovered bones as if it was her own child? More evidence also points toward the belief of is or at least something similar.
After digging for more and more hours, the character finds all of the bones in the ground and the dig comes to an end. This has now shifted from the climax into a very short falling action section. The falling action describes how the character gathers up all of the bones of the body. Doing so, she goes back up and grabs a cloth to wrap the bones up in in saying, “she went up to the house, and returned quickly, eagerly, with a five-foot runner of antique velvet cloth, a deep wine color, in which to carry the skull and bones up to the house” (3). This is a resemblance to how in hospitals that after the birth of a child they wrap up the baby in a cloth. After taking the cloth of bones back up to the house, she places them in her room, calling her room now a “Temple”.
Oates has a way of using a wide variety of description through the short story of “The Temple”. She may have had a slow beginning to the story, but the plot has a steady flow until the ending which comes a little fast. She seems to describe a child birth in the discovery of bones which may rise some questioning but overall sets the mood for a very pleasing gothic story from the beginning to the end.